


Wiping Her Ledger Clean

by writing_as_tracey



Series: This Isn't Freedom - It's Bughead Prompts [2]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: AU, Alternative Universe - Marvel's the Avengers, F/M, Gen, Natasha Romanov & Clint Barton - Freeform, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-05
Updated: 2017-07-05
Packaged: 2018-11-28 06:31:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11412225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writing_as_tracey/pseuds/writing_as_tracey
Summary: Tumblr Prompt:Betty and Jughead as... Natasha and Clint? Don't tell me avenger!Betty wouldn't have red in her ledger.





	Wiping Her Ledger Clean

**_Wiping Her Ledger Clean  
(aka Bughead: Assemble!_** )

* * *

Betty is staring furiously at the figure in the glass container. She knows that she should reign in her emotions more – make them tighter, crisper – because that was what she was trained to do, but— _dammit_. Someone went after Jug.

 _Her_ Jughead.

So, she musters up her emotional attachment because that’s what he wants to see. He wants to see her fear, her concern. Well, she’ll play the self-proclaimed Mistress of Dark with her own game.

“I want to know what you’ve done with Agent Jones.”

Grundy – if that’s her real name, and Betty is sure it isn’t – rolls her eyes from where she is lounging against the bench in her glass prison, idly picking at her nails. She doesn’t even raise her brown head from looking down at her hands. “I would say I’ve… expanded his mind.”

Betty clamps her jaw tightly shut at the euphemism Grundy slides in. “And once you’ve won, once you’re the Queen of it all, what happens to his mind?”

Grundy does look up then, her brown eyes alit with something that makes Betty’s spine straighten, in order to prepare herself against what poison will spew from her mouth. It was bad enough when Grundy went after Archie, her oldest friend, but to go after Jughead? Her partner? Her  _everything_? Everything she hasn’t yet said to him, admitted aloud and barely admitted to herself?

“Oh. Is this  _love_ , Agent Cooper?”

Betty stops her pacing, turning to face Grundy head-on.

“Love is for children.” She thinks of her sister, hidden away in some farmhouse in rural Pennsylvania, with her two redheaded children and a dead husband because she wasn’t fast enough one day; because Betty wasn’t good enough. “I owe him a debt.”

Grundy rises to her feet, stalking closer. She purrs, “Tell me.”

 _Gotchya,_  thinks Betty, and she slides her emotions closer to the surface and lets a tremble appear on her lips. “Before I worked for SHIELD, I, uh… Well, I made a name for myself. I have a very specific skill set. I didn’t care who I used it for, or on. I got on SHIELD’s radar in a bad way. Agent Jones was sent to kill me. He made a different call.”

Grundy is eager to keep Betty talking, to pull her emotions through the wringer, and Betty lets her. After all, this is what her mother trained her to do. The slender brunette psychopath continues on about Agent Jones, about sparing him and what Betty would give in return, but when she mentions her ledger, Grundy becomes excited.

“Can you?” she asks, her eyes wide and her mouth a too bright red in the fluorescent lights of the ship. “Can you wipe out that much red? Chuck Clayton, the Sisters of Mercy fire –  _Jason Blossom_?”

Betty doesn’t need to fake the wince that comes to her face, and Grundy sees it.

“Forsythe told me  _everything_. Your ledger is dripping, it’s GUSHING red, and you think saving a man no more virtuous than yourself will change anything?” she scoffs and tosses her long hair back. “This is the basest sentimentality. This is a child at prayer…  _PATHETIC_! You lie and kill in the service of liars and killers. You pretend to be separate, to have your own code. Something that makes up for the horrors. But they are a part of you, and they will never go away!…” she trails off, moving forward until she is feet away from Betty, their eyes locking on one another. “I won’t touch Jones. Not until I make him kill you!

“Slowly, intimately, in every way he knows you fear!” she continues, driving the point home that whatever secret Betty shared with Jughead, whatever dreams and hopes and fears and guilt, Grundy knows it too, now. “And then he’ll wake just long enough to see his good work, and when he screams, I’ll split his skull! This is  _my_  bargain, you mewling bitch!”

Betty’s lip quivers and she lets tears appear in her eyes. “You’re a monster!”

Grundy sneers, a pleased look on her face. “Oh, no, little girl. You brought the monster.”

 _Thank you,_  she thinks, her eyes drying and her lip no longer trembling. She tilts her head and blinks at the suddenly startled Grundy. “So, Moose. That’s your play.”

“What?”

Betty touched the earpiece she wore and spoke directly into it, knowing she had a direct connection to Agent Hermione Lodge and Director Fred Andrews. “Grundy means to unleash Moose. Keep Mr. Mason in the lab, I’m on my way.” She pauses, then adds, “And send Dilton as well.”

When she turns back to Grundy, there is annoyance and frustration across the older woman’s face. “Thank you for your cooperation.”

* * *

Of course, the peace doesn’t last, and barely two hours later, she is standing back to back with her partner, Jughead Jones, firing her pistols at the green aliens that are laying waste to the small town of Riverdale, while he’s drawing back his bow and firing his arrows.

She huffs out a breath and turns, spotting one of the Chitauri lurking around from the Register, aiming its strange blaster at Jughead’s blind spot. She leans across him, her body brushing against his.

“Wha–?”

She aims her pistol and releases a single shot, her hand flicking back just slightly from the recoil. He glances to the side and notices the sprawling body of the alien, and smirks down at her. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” she replies, back at his side. But her taking out the alien was only one, and a horde descends from one of the long leviathan ships above them. She eyes the mass of black and green cautiously.

“This is like Centerville all over again.”

Jughead does a spit-take at the shorter blonde beside him, nocking an arrow on his bow. “You and I remember Centerville very differently.”

Betty rolls her eyes, and doesn’t speak what’s on her mind, because Jughead is already releasing his arrow and nocking another, his arm muscles rippling just so by the action.

She thinks,  _as long as you remember it, now; she didn’t take you from me at all, Juggie_ , and raises both her pistols. She’s right where she wants to be, beside him, fighting for Riverdale, and when this is done? Maybe there won’t be as much red in her ledger anymore.

* * *

FIN

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [singsongsung](http://archiveofourown.org/users/singsongsung/pseuds/singsongsung) for this prompt on Tumblr! ❤️


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